PGD Library

[WILL]

Programmer's content in the Library.

In light of a previous conversation in the forums before the new year, it was addressed that visitors may want to see even more programming content on the site. Well who am I to refuse.

I'm going to try and get more programming related content onto the site! This will include staff-written Articles as well as News and the PGD Library.

The main challange I face currently is that I cannot be in all places and be looking for all things at the same time, this is obvious. So what I'd like for you, the good visitors, posters and site members of PGD to do is help me start by populating the PGD Library with good programing content.

What goes in the PGD Library? Well if you have not been in there, get in there! Look and search through all the useful content that I and my fellow PGD staffers have collected over the past year.

There is not much right now, but with your help, there could be more. If you know of a good article, tutorial, paper, interview or online book, let us know via PM or email. I would love to add it to the collection!


Thanks guys!

[LP]

Finally! Many thanks, Will!

By the way, what about adding "Code of the Week" section? There was "Code of the Day" on FlipCode, which had actually some nice stuff. Same concept, but Pascal Code... What do you think?

[WILL]

Hmm... well the only problem with that [size=9px](besides that I'll need a wee bit to add the section to the site)[/size] is that we'll need someone to run it. And we should not add it if it's only going to come to a halt after the initial energy of the idea is lost. Barring that, it sounds like a great idea.

OR if you would like, you could post an email address asking people to submit stuff to you and you could have your own articles series and release a source clip/algo of the week sort of thing. This will allow you some time to prepare a few weeks in advance should you go on vacation or something to that effect.

[LP]

That's a good point and that is why I mentioned "Code of the week" instead of "Code of the day", since posting every day will exhaust all ideas quickly. :?

In order to make it work, there should be definitely several people wiling to post some useful code every week. Asking for some volunteers would be a good start.

For those who don't know what we are talking about: on FlipCode there was "Code of the day" section where someone posted a small piece of code every day, things like "Integer square root function", "Small 3ds loader", "3d camera class", "nearest power of 2 function" and so on.

[Robert Kosek]

While I like the code of the week concept, I think that you ought to start a topic specifically to garner the snippets of code - then at the end of the week the admins sort them through, select and post the one(s) they like most. Or it could just be a "never-ending" que of snippets to post.


Personally I am very happy that you'll be adding more programming articles. A few topics of interest to me are: Game loop structure/execution, Object Orientation/Optimization (and how much is too much? :? ), Basic Assembly.

The latter is because I can't make heads or tails out of assembler, and it freaks me out when getting unexpected errors in asm code. (Like attempting to update a component I found...)

[WILL]

While I like the code of the week concept, I think that you ought to start a topic specifically to garner the snippets of code - then at the end of the week the admins sort them through, select and post the one(s) they like most. Or it could just be a "never-ending" que of snippets to post.

I agree with Robert, this idea is deserving of a seperate thread. Lifepower, go ahead and make a sperate topic about this idea and see what others think or can give you. If it turns out to be popular, perhaps we can work to publish it and make it available for syndication.

Personally I am very happy that you'll be adding more programming articles. A few topics of interest to me are: Game loop structure/execution, Object Orientation/Optimization (and how much is too much? :? ), Basic Assembly.

If you know of any that you are reading or have read please email me with the URL! It'll help a lot with even this simple endevour.

Also, you will want to keep an eye on Athena's column! She is going to be doing a lot of material on optimization and other things like propper pogramming practices. The kind of stuff that is often abused by independant brand game developers. And it will all have a game programming flavour to it too. So you won't feel so much like it's a dull highschool math lesson. I'm quite happy to have her writting for PGD.

The latter is because I can't make heads or tails out of assembler, and it freaks me out when getting unexpected errors in asm code. (Like attempting to update a component I found...)

The Assembly language is a great, wonderful and powerful midget! :eh: It'll get right in there and get to all those fine wonderful places that you can't go with any other high-level language.

That said, it's a great companion to Pascal and I was hoping to be able to find at least some nice in-line ASM material to stick in the library. If anyone has a good beginners tutorial for assembly, hopefully relating to one of the modern compilers or IDEs available now let me know!

Staffers, start looking for some things too. Every bit and peice helps! :clap:

[Balaras]

If anyone has a good beginners tutorial for assembly, hopefully relating to one of the modern compilers or IDEs available now let me know!

Dennis Christensen of fastcode has some BASM articles right here:
BASM for Beginners

I have not read them myself yet, they've just been sitting on my must read list for a while. Maybe someone will find something in them usable for gamedev or as a jumpstart for an article.

/Balaras

[LP]

I agree with Robert, this idea is deserving of a seperate thread. Lifepower, go ahead and make a sperate topic about this idea and see what others think or can give you.

It turns out that I'm getting more busy with every day now, so don't have time for long discussions anymore. Just wanted to give an idea

The latter is because I can't make heads or tails out of assembler, and it freaks me out when getting unexpected errors in asm code. (Like attempting to update a component I found...)

The Assembly language is a great, wonderful and powerful midget! :eh: It'll get right in there and get to all those fine wonderful places that you can't go with any other high-level language.

If you have so much interest in assembly, I can write an article or two for you about using inline assembly and perhaps some SIMD extensions.